News of the Week

The Florida Board of Education last week approved science standards that for the first time explicitly embrace the teaching of evolution. But antievolution activists are claiming that the vote bolsters their position that evolution is a "just a theory" and therefore unproven.

Advisers to the U.S. National Institutes of Health outlined a near-final plan to rescue the overburdened NIH peer-review system last week. They want NIH to go for a sweeping overhaul--one that would speed reviews, make the system more inviting, and nudge it to favor new ideas.

An Indian chemistry professor has been punished by his university for committing unethical practices involving what appear to be dozens of recent papers, including plagiarizing data in an article submitted last year to an analytical chemistry journal.

About The Cover

COVER Like a cauliflower, the quantum critical regime has the same appearance irrespective of viewing distance. Fluctuations prevent a stable phase from developing; instead a patchwork of mixed phases arises. See the special section on quantum matter beginning on page 1201 .